Contents

Purpose

This page is not as deadly serious as the other Jazz resources found on this wiki. In fact, this page is the Jazz relaxing section, where tired and busy Jazz editors come to read funny quotes, enlightening quotes, sad quotes, hilarious quotes...

While some of these quotes may be interesting in themselves for people without any jazz knowledge, it's probable that most of them can't be fully appreciated without at least an idea of who was what.

the quote may talk about jazz, but other subjects are fine too: cats, life, stuff

the quote may link to a maximum number of other stuff (be they other artists, releases, wiki pages, ...)

there may be exceptions to any of the above points

the quote must be somewhat exceptionally interesting (this page doesn't want to be exhaustive, but selective)

Note that there already are thousands of similar projects on the web (including the excellent page at All About Jazz). So, you may think: what's the point? To which I answer: we are the one-stop-all-about-music resource, hence we need *our* Jazz Quotes page :)

"Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells. Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments."

"I dont want to sound immodest, but what musicians like myself play is Ph.D. music compared to the nursery-school sounds of a lot of rock and roll. They've got to grow out of it... You can only maintain that stance so long - unless, in musical terms, you're retarded."

"In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds."